DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza — At least 13 people were killed in three Israeli airstrikes that hit refugee camps in central Gaza overnight on Saturday, according to Palestinian health officials, as ceasefire talks in Cairo appeared to be moving forward.
Among the dead in the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps were three children and a woman, according to Palestinian ambulance crews who transported the bodies to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. The 13 bodies were counted by AP journalists at the hospital.
Earlier, a medical team delivered a live baby to a Palestinian woman killed in an airstrike that hit her home in Nuseirat on Thursday night.
Ola al-Kurd, 25, died along with six other people in the explosion, but emergency workers rushed him to Al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza in the hope of saving the fetus. Hours later, doctors told The Associated Press that a boy had been born.
The as-yet-unnamed newborn is stable but has suffered from oxygen shortages and has been placed in an incubator, Dr. Khalil Dajran said Friday.
“Ola’s husband and a relative survived yesterday’s attack, while everyone else was killed,” Majid al-Kurd, the dead woman’s cousin, told the AP on Saturday.
“The baby is in good health according to what the doctors said,” he added.
The war in Gaza, which was sparked by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, has killed more than 38,900 people, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian coastal territory, displacing most of its 2.3 million inhabitants and causing widespread famine.
The Hamas attack in October killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the militants took about 250 hostage. About 120 remain in captivity, and about a third of them are believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities. .
The war between Israel and Hamas has left thousands of women and children dead, according to health officials in the Gaza Strip. In April, a premature Palestinian baby was rescued from her dead mother’s womb but he died days later.
In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli forces shot dead a 20-year-old man on Friday night. Commenting on the shooting, the Israeli military said its forces opened fire on a group of Palestinians who were throwing stones at Israeli troops in the town of Beit Ummar.
A witness said Ibrahim Zaqeq was not directly involved in the clashes and was nearby.
Zaqeq “just looked at them, they shot him in the head. I picked him up from here and took him to the clinic,” Thare Abu Hashem said.
On Saturday, Hamas identified Zaqeq as one of its members. The militant group’s green flag draped his body during the funeral.
Violence has increased in the territory since the Gaza war began. At least 577 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli fire since then, according to the Ramallah-based Health Ministry, which tracks Palestinian deaths.
In Cairo, international mediators, including the United States, continue to press Israel and Hamas toward a gradual agreement that would stop the fighting and free about 120 hostages in Gaza.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel that will free Israeli hostages held by the group in Gaza is “within the 10-yard line,” but He added that “we know that anything in the last 10 meters is the most difficult.”
Intermittent and fruitless negotiations between the warring parties have been held since the week-long ceasefire in November, with both Hamas and Israel repeatedly accusing each other of thwarting the effort to reach an agreement.
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Jeffery reported from the West Bank city of Ramallah.
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